Let a1,...an be real numbers. Consider the operation which replaces these numbers with |a1−a2|,|a2−a3|,...|an−a1|, and iterate. Under the assumption that aiinmathbbZ, the iteration is guaranteed to terminate with all of the numbers set to zero if and only if n is a power of two. A friend of mine knows how to prove this, but wants to be able to reference a source where this problem (and/or its generalization to real numbers) is mentioned, and we can't figure out what search terms to use. Can anyone help us out?
(If someone can figure out a better title for this question, that would also be appreciated.)
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